Describing a lens or optical system that is free from astigmatism, producing clear, undistorted images across the entire field of view.
From 'anastigmat' plus the adjective suffix '-ic'. The term became standard in optical and photographic industries in the early 20th century.
Early photographers celebrated anastigmatic lenses the way modern people celebrate a perfect camera sensor—they meant you could actually trust what you saw in the photograph instead of accepting weird lens distortion as just 'how cameras worked.'
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